Knave's Wager

by Loretta Chase

  She was examining every detail for the fifty-first time when a chill tickled her neck. She knew the marquess stood behind her, even before he spoke, though she had not heard him enter. Her body stiffened.

  “The centre-piece wants to move a bit to the right,” he said.

  She turned slowly to face him. “It is precisely where it belongs.”

  “Unlike certain parties you could mention?” He moved a few steps closer.

  “Now you have mentioned it, I would prefer you returned to the company, my lord. Your disappearance will be remarked, and I do think you have caused enough talk as it is.”

  “But my hostess will not talk—to me, at any rate. I wonder why that is.”

  Another step brought him a few inches from her, and Lilith, retreating, found herself backed up against the table.

  “Now I wonder whether you mean to clamber over it,” he said gravely. “You cannot be comfortable as you are.”

  “Will you please—”

  She heard footsteps approaching. In the same instant, his hand clasped her arm, and in one smooth series of motions he’d drawn her away from the table and guided her through the opposite door into a small room adjoining.

  The well-oiled door closed soundlessly behind them. Beyond it she heard two servants talking softly, then the sounds of chairs being moved. After two or three endless minutes, the footsteps and voices faded away.

  “They are quiet and efficient,” said Lord Brandon as he folded his arms and lazily leaned back against the door. “Yet all servants are bound by some unwritten code to convey every tidbit they discover to every other servant with whom they are remotely acquainted. Thence the tidbit, enlarged to prodigious size, is conveyed for the delectation of their masters. Speaking of delectable, Mrs. Davenant—”

  “I must insist you return to the company, my lord,” she said unsteadily.

  “Your new coiffure,” he went on, “Is a delicious concoction. Is that an orchid—no, two—nestled among the curls? I rather fancy orchids. I have a gardener who works magic in a damp, dark hothouse. Still, I have never seen the species displayed to such advantage.”

  “It appears they came to me by mistake. Since there was no card, it was impossible to return them. My abigail believed they looked well enough with the rosebuds.”

  “They suit you better than rosebuds. You are not a common rose sort of beauty, but a rare and dangerous exotic. Dangerous to my peace of mind, at any rate,” he added, his voice very low. “You don’t want me, but I cannot keep away, you see.”

  “I see that you are standing in my way. Still, there is another exit,” she said, clasping her hands to stop their trembling.

  His glance caught the movement then the green eyes were piercing hers. “You are always wanting to run from me,” he said. “Do I frighten you?”

  Certainly not,” she answered, nearly choking on the words. “I simply do not care to be made an object of speculation. I cannot believe you are so insensitive as to be unaware of that. Yet you seem—it seems at times as though you go out of your way—as though you have some game with me. I do not know what it is or why you should wish to distress me and annoy my fiancé. We have neither of us done you any ill.”

  “It,” he said calmly, “is attraction, and the game is the oldest one in the world.”

  Her face grew very warm. “I see. You are not done mocking me.”

  “No, I am trying to court you.”

  She barely suppressed the gasp. “This offensive joke has gone far enough, my lord. Court, indeed. I, engaged to be wed—even if I were not the very last woman in England a man of your sort would be attracted to. Your idea of humour is distasteful.”

  He sighed. “I knew how it would be,” he said, coming away from the door. “Your brain has not yet recovered from years of being tortured by those cruel coils. I shall have to provide scientific proof.”

  He crossed the small room. Panicked, Lilith retreated to the opposite door. Just as her shaking fingers touched the handle, his hand closed over them. His touch was an electric shock, succeeded by a wave of shocks as he gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

  She had been married. She had been embraced before, and always her body had stiffened at Charles’s impatient intimacies. Always she had felt awkward and inadequate. Thus, she had simply frozen, praying he would be done and her mortification ended quickly. She froze now, tense and anxious within, rigidly unresponsive without, and endured, waiting for Lord Brandon to give up.

  Or tried to wait. Because he seemed to have no inkling he was kissing a glacier.

  His mouth moved slowly over hers, lazily tasting, while his fingers idly stroked the back of her neck. Under that light, almost negligible touch, the stiff muscles warmed and relaxed, and warmth trickled down her spine. She caught her breath in surprise, and his tongue flicked over her parted lips lightly, teasingly, before his mouth closed fully over hers once more. Tingling heat washed through her then, weakening muscles, swamping will, melting everything in its path, so that she scarcely knew she was answering his kiss until it stopped.

  She opened shocked eyes to a heavy-lidded green gaze. His face was still very near.

  “You appear skeptical yet,” he whispered. “I had better provide more evidence.”

  “No!”

  He did not move. She could discern the faint lines at the corners of his eyes and a minute scar over his left cheekbone. His breath lightly caressed her face, and the scent of sandalwood teased her nostrils. Her heart skittered wildly.

  She looked the other way, and wished frantically he would move away, because she could not. His face was so cool and assured, while her own was hot—with shame, no doubt, because he had so bewitched her that she’d very nearly brought her lips closer again... for more. But there was no magic and therefore could be no bewitchery, and so she made her voice cold and steady as she spoke.

  “I certainly need no further proof,” she said, “that you are despicable.”

  “I was much goaded, Mrs. Davenant. Your perfume made me desperate.”

  She was desperate in any event, because he still had not moved, and in the narrow space between them was a treacherous current. She had been drawn in once, all unwitting. She would not be so again.

  She pushed him away and, on unsteady legs, quitted the room.

  Lord Brandon discovered that the other door opened onto a hall that would take him out of the house unseen by any but a few servants. One of these, upon retrieving his lordship’s hat and stick and whispering a few words, received a generous vail.

  It wanted two hours until the marquess’s appointment with an actress. He might have spent these at the theatre, but her onstage performance was not what entertained him. Therefore, he returned to his town house to change into less formal attire.

  As he was unwrapping his neckcloth, his glance fell upon his left shirt cuff. He frowned.

  “Hillard,” he called.

  His valet hastened into the dressing room.

  “M’lud.”

  “Bring me a pistol.”

  Mr. Hillard had been with his master twenty years.

  “Yes, m’lud. What sort of pistol did you have in mind? Mr. Manton has made you several.”

  “You cannot ask me to make such a decision at a time like this. I am a broken man. There is a thread,” Lord Brandon said in sepulchral tones, “hanging from my cuff.”

  “M’lud, that is impossible. I beg your pardon for contradicting, but it is completely impossible.”

  His lordship put out his hand and pointed to the offending cuff. “What do you call that?” he asked in the same hollow voice.

  Hillard stepped closer and peered at the object. “M’lud, I call it a hair. A long, reddish one,” he added, his face immobile, “with a curl to it. I can’t think how it got there, but it isn’t a thread. Shall I remove it?”

  “No, Hillard. You have suffered enough. I have grievously offended you. I hope you will come to forgive me one day, for there were extenuating cir
cumstances. The light is dim and my eyesight is failing me. That has been pointed out to me on more than one occasion.”

  “I am sorry to hear it, m’lud.”

  “Now I have depressed your spirits. You had better step round to the butler’s pantry and restore yourself with some beverage appropriate to the circumstances.”

  “But you meant to go out, m’lud, did you not?”

  “Later. Perhaps I had better rest first.”

  When the valet had left, Lord Brandon carefully removed the gleaming strand from the stud on which it had caught— when he had caught her, he reflected with a small smile. Cornered and caught her, trembling, in his arms.

  That had been a novel experience. He had never before embraced a frightened woman. Angry women, yes, and those who feigned shyness, and those who were eager—but never one genuinely afraid. Never before, either, had he encountered so powerful an effort to resist.

  Yet she could not, and he’d known she could not. Which was no conceit in him, only statement of fact. Elise notwithstanding, he would not have pursued the widow if he had not believed there was an attraction from the start.

  His instincts never failed him in such cases. Even so, he had toyed with her first, to be certain, and all his artful teasing since had had one clear object: to make her inescapably aware of him.

  Lord Brandon’s smile twisted slightly. He had teased himself as well. That could not be denied. Wooing her he’d known would require patience. Nevertheless, though he was not an impatient man, tonight...

  He drew the strand of hair out between his fingers.

  For that endless time when she’d refused to succumb— when she stood, rigid as a marble column in his arms—he had wanted to shake her. The silken alabaster skin, the rich mass of curling hair, the surprisingly lush perfume wafting languorously to his nostrils... yes, the haughty countenance as well, and the strong, lithe body recoiling from his own. It had been, for a moment, maddening. But only for a moment, because she had weakened at last.

  “At last,” he murmured. “What was it then, madam?” he asked the fragile trophy of his night’s work.

  Then, he answered silently, he had tasted a young girl’s kiss, tentative and inexperienced. Though she had been married six years and widowed five, one might have believed it was a virgin prisoned in his arms. All the same, her response had moved him. Even now, reflecting upon it made him... uneasy.

  He glanced at the fresh linen, coat, waistcoat, and pantaloons Hillard had set out for him. It was time to dress. Brandon never kept his paramours waiting.

  He could not repress a sigh. He had done it all a thousand times before. He had known them all, drab to duchess, and they were all, apart from details of packaging, the same. There was no challenge in the pursuit—no pursuit required, actually. No need for guile, as Elise had said. No danger and certainly no consequences of failure.

  Small wonder the widow excited him.

  “Thank heaven that’s done,” said Cecily when the door had closed behind the last of their guests.

  “My dear, I hope you don’t mean your comeout ball was an ordeal,” said Emma. “You seemed to be enjoying yourself well enough.”

  “Oh, I did,” Cecily said with a quick glance at her aunt. “How could I help it, when Aunt Lilith made all so splendid—so perfect?”

  The widow was staring at a centre-piece one of the footmen was carrying out of the supper room. She did not respond.

  “Aunt Lilith?” Cecily moved to her aunt’s side and took her hand. Lilith looked at her blankly.

  “Thank you so much, Aunt. It was the most beautiful party, and I cannot think when I’ve had a better time—away from my mare, that is,” she added with a grin. “I was only relieved I managed to survive the evening without committing any outrageous faux-pas.”

  “Oh, Cecily.” To the girl’s astonishment, her aunt threw her arms around her and hugged her—almost desperately, it seemed.

  Then, just as abruptly, she drew away. “You are a great success,” she said with her usual composure. “Equally important, you have deserved it. I am very proud of you, my dear.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it, Aunt. I shall have to tell you every compliment I received, naturally, and every silly thing the gentlemen contrived to say, and draw up a lengthy list of the men in London who’d do better for a dancing master. But not tonight—or this morning, rather. It’s nearly dawn, isn’t it? You must be exhausted, because the hostess has the most laborious job of all. Indeed, my aunt had better go to bed right away, don’t you think, Emma?”

  Emma bent a troubled glance upon the widow. “You have one of your headaches,” she said. “Why don’t you go up, as Cecily advises? I shall make you a nice herbal tea, shall I?”

  “Thank you, but I am only a bit weary. This has been altogether a long day... and evening... and...” Lilith turned back to her niece. “Of course I shall want to hear every detail of your triumph,” she said with a forced smile. “But we will all do better for some sleep.”

  As soon as she had attained the safety of her dressing room, Lilith tore the flowers and pins from her head, took up her brush, and savagely attacked her hair. Tears had started to her eyes when she heard her abigail’s light footstep. “Go to bed, Mary. I told you not to wait up.”

  The brush was taken from her hand. “But it’s just as well I did, isn’t it? You being run off your feet, and your head probably ringing from all the noise. I’m sure this was twice the crowd we had for Miss Georgiana. And, naturally, twice the number of biddies needing to be attended to. I could hear them squawking all the way downstairs, pesky old hens,” Mary grumbled, all the while plying the dark auburn tresses with slow, soothing strokes. “And here I am, bad as any of them, jabbering at you when you must be tired to death of talk.”

  Lilith was more than tired to death. Her guests had pricked and stung her at every turn, in chorus to the pricking and stinging of her own conscience.

  Every female in the company, it seemed, had remarked her brief disappearance and felt compelled to point out the odd coincidence of Lord Brandon’s vanishing at the same time.

  Their hostess had her answer ready, the same answer for them all. Had Lord Brandon left? She had not noticed, yet she was scarcely surprised. A young girl’s comeout must seem to him a very tame affair. One could not be amazed at his leaving to seek livelier entertainment.

  Thus she had endured, and told herself she had endured worse—her marriage, for instance. Still, she prayed for great news from abroad to distract the Beau Monde from its obsessive attention to herself. Such news would not be forthcoming this evening, but tomorrow, perhaps. Tomorrow, perhaps, Lord Brandon’s odd whims would be forgotten... by others, at least.

  Chapter Eight

  Unfortunately for Mrs. Davenant, rumours of Buonaparte’s attempted suicide the previous day could not possibly reach London in time to distract her gossip-hungry acquaintances. The afternoon following the comeout saw her drawing room packed with visitors, not all of them Cecily’s dancing partners.

  Lady Enders did her best, making a great piece of work of minor matters, such as Hothouse’s obstinate determination to procure passports to Paris for himself and Lord Byron, despite the Government’s equally firm resolve not to issue any. She even went so far as to describe in tedious detail the illuminations at Carlton House celebrating the triumph of the Bourbons, though everyone had seen them and raved sufficiently days before.

  Neither illuminations, Louis XVIII, nor even the capricious Lord Byron could be half so sensational a subject as the lavish bouquet of lilies that arrived just as Lady Jersey did, and five minutes before Lord Robert Downs made his appearance.

  “I have never heard such a fuss about a lot of posies,” he whispered to Cecily when he had elbowed several other fellows out of the way and had her, for the moment, to himself.

  “I know. You’d think Napoleon himself had been delivered. But Lady Jersey recognised your cousin’s servant, it seems, and so she must peep at the card
, and then declare it is Lord Brandon’s hand, for she’d know it anywhere, and then she must tease my poor aunt to read the note to the company.”

  Robert looked at the flowers, which had been exiled to the darkest corner of the room in a futile attempt to subdue curiosity. Then he looked at Cecily. “Julian sent them?” he asked. “What did the note say?”

  “Good heavens, you don’t suppose Aunt Lilith actually read it out, do you? She never even looked at it, but crumpled it up and thrust it into her pocket.” Cecily grinned. “Lady Jersey is ever so vexed. She’s bursting to know what it said. If she dared, I imagine she’d wrestle my aunt to the floor to get it from her. But even she is a little afraid of Aunt Lilith—though she hasn’t left off teasing altogether,”

  Lord Robert certainly would not have had the audacity to tease Mrs. Davenant. She had never looked more glacier-like than now, her face frozen in politeness, her chin high, her gaze at its most imperiously icy. He would as soon take a dip in the northernmost depths of the North Sea.

  “I suppose,” he said, “this is not the best time to ask permission to ride with you.”

  “Actually, it’s the perfect time,” said Cecily. “Just don’t mention flowers or your cousin. Since you’ll be the only one to refrain from those topics, she’ll be touched by your delicacy.”

  His expression must have been very doubtful, because Cecily added, “Shall I ask her, then—or would that be excessively forward of me?”

  If the widow’s own eighteen-year-old niece was not intimidated at the prospect, then a man of the world certainly could not be.

  When Mrs. Davenant had seen off a frustrated Lady Jersey, Lord Robert approached his hostess.

  “Riding?” she echoed blankly, as though he had been speaking Egyptian.

  He was not sure after exactly what he’d said to that frosty figure, though it must have been some garbled paraphrasing of Julian’s comments the other day. Whatever it was, it worked—or else the widow was too much preoccupied with other matters to interrogate him closely, for she gave her consent rather abstractedly, and agreed to accompany the two young people the following morning.